


meant to be

by hairenachino



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: AHAHAHA, Attempt at Humor, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Out of Character, Slice of Life, dont judge, idk i just randomly thought of this, might write a spin off, sorry for not updating ive been really busy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2019-12-25 14:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18263096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hairenachino/pseuds/hairenachino
Summary: "Hey," Reno grinned. He was halfway through an unsuccessful attempt to worm himself through Cloud's window."Hey yourself," Cloud said, unimpressed.





	1. fried bananas and maple syrup

**Author's Note:**

> ahahahaha how long has it been since i last posted  
> THAT'S RIGHT I WAS STILL IN THE BNHA FANDOM  
> OH WELL I GUESS I'LL HAVE TO SUFFER WITH THE REST OF YOU IN FF7 HELL

The first thing Cloud considered when he (reluctantly) moved into an actual apartment (of his own- and wasn’t  _ that _ a novel concept?) was how the hell he would find a way to somehow find a paint colour that  _ wouldn’t  _ clash with First Tsurugi- his beautiful baby, which tended to annihilate any semblance of domesticity the moment he started swinging it around. 

_ And when you do that,  _ Tifa had mused one time, just a couple shots too many into the mystifying territory of drunkenness,  _ your hair- it goes everywhere. It’s so spiky, but it’s so- so fluffy. Like a chocobo butt.  _ She giggled then, and Cloud had been too pleased to be offended. 

(He was plenty offended, actually, but he was chugging about straight alcohol around that point, and couldn’t really care less.)

The apartment itself was pretty spartan, sparse on the frills but not exactly easy on the eyes. He’d felt bad about mooching off of Tifa and making her keep a spare room he rarely visited, and had decided to clean what little possessions he’d left up and find a place of his own-and this was what he got. Like most things in Edge, it was minimalist and a little lopsided, with a tiny bathroom and a lone, dim light bulb, its wan yellow-white glow flickering miserably. But he’d lived in-and dealt with- much worse.

(green green hot burning through his skin over under sinking into his veins as his blood screamed and he gurgled into the acidic tang of horrible  _ horrible horrible-) _

So he tried going with a nice, cheery yellow. Barret testified for the colour, proudly announcing that it was Marlene’s favourite, and going on and on about how it was  _ just  _ as bright as she was. Marlene had smiled a little sheepishly, but there was no denying the joy she felt at the praise.

Denzel offered to help-a little awkwardly- but his eyes lit up, just that bit, and Cloud really, really couldn’t refuse that look. They spent an afternoon alternating between scrunching their noses up at the fumes and messing with the roller in an attempt to make the miserable gray wall a little more effervescent. Denzel’s hands were a sticky yellow mess by the end, and Cloud had managed to get it behind his ears and on his feet. They had actually only managed to finish one wall, and didn’t plans to finish the other ones any time soon.

 

(Tifa checked in right around the time they finished, being greeted by the strange sight of Cloud and Denzel slacking off and trying to finger-paint chocobos on the walls with the excess yellow paint they had. Resting her shoulder on the doorframe, she blinked in surprise when Cloud didn’t react to her presence.

 

She smiled to herself and closed the door, saving the lecture for later.)

 

In the end, the yellow  _ did  _ clash horribly with his sword, but Cloud liked the chocobo-esque scribbles too much to care. First Tsurugi would have to deal with suffering in aesthetically unsatisfying hell like the rest of them. He’d unpacked what little possessions he had brought, given the stink eye to someone staring at his beauty, Fenrir, and found a different position to sleep in no less than sixteen times.

Meals were an interesting affair, with Cloud’s jumbled memories producing an odd mixture of smoky mountain cuisine and tangy Gongagan food that actually didn’t taste too bad. He ended up experimenting with what he had, treating Denzel to what had to be the strangest lunch of his life. Tifa’s eyes glazed over a little as she tried a fried banana drizzled in maple syrup and caramel, offering nothing but a tilt of her head in response.

Cloud grimaced and stuck to eggs for breakfast from then.

 

“Hey Cloud,” Yuffie's voice crackled through his PHS’ speaker. “I had a really weird dream. That I was the possessor of the largest materia collection on the planet through highly suspicious and illicit means. I also had the compulsion to visit the dungeons. It was really, really weird. But cool!”

“Really? Cloud said, amused.”Come to think of it, I had a dream where I was in this fight club called Super Crashing Sisters or something. I got vaporized by some crazy light god and was only saved because of a pink puffball going beyond the speed of light.”

He could already see the weird look Yuffie was giving him on the other end. “Cloud, I think you need help. Maybe you should keep a dream journal or something.”

“Yeah, sure,” he sighed. “Maybe I should.”

 

Life went chugging along its idyllic, cheery track. Cloud still went out to go joyride in the barren earth around Edge, exterminating the local ten-foot tall vermin all the while, but it was the happiest he'd been in a long, long time.

 

No one was dying in unspeakable manners. No one was locked up and mutated horribly beyond their will. No one blew up towns once they discovered their origins (at least, he hoped not).

 

It was horribly domestic. Fantastically, horribly, domestic. 

 

Of course, that was when the Turks had to ruin everything.

 

_ A  _ Turk, in fact. An irritating, redheaded one, whose name started with the eighteenth letter of the alphabet and almost rhymed with emo.

  
  
  



	2. what are you looking for

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Alright then,” he called. “Whoever you are, just come on out so I can give you a very gentle whacking with my ridiculously large sword. Very gentle. It won’t hurt a bit. You’ll just feel a little discomfort and then everything will go dark.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh probably very out of character and poorly written humor but i tried lmao  
> minimal angst but still there

Cloud stared at the ceiling. His face was dripping wet.

The ceiling, unfortunately, did not stare back. It did, however, have a fascinatingly blobby patch of moisture on it that was suspiciously concentrated.

He sat up, muscles protesting a little after a night spent hunched over maintaining Fenrir. “What in the goddamn…?” he murmured.

With his drooping once-spiky hair and soaked countenance scrunched up in confusion, he made quite the picture. The time, when he checked, was 8:00.  _Damn. Getting off my routine after all those WRO meetings, huh?_

Stumbling out of bed and tossing a loose black t-shirt and sweatpants on, he glared outside for the perpetrator.  _ What…?  _

There weren’t any footprints in the the loose gravel outside the building, and no one was clinging on the wall within sight from the windowsill. He sighed, and turned around.  He heard some very un-subtle whispering from the direction of the doorway. There was only one reason for this- a prank. Probably by Denzel, who had somehow managed to get it on the ceiling with someone’s help.

“Alright then,” he called. “Whoever you are, just come on out so I can give you a very gentle whacking with my ridiculously large sword. Very gentle. It won’t hurt a bit. You’ll just feel a little discomfort and then everything will go dark.”

He heard some hastily-muffled giggling from the direction of the doorway and a hissed “Oh shit!” before the intruders made themselves known- it was, in fact, Denzel, accompanied by-

Cloud stared. “Reno? What in the godda-”

“Language!” Reno declared triumphantly, as if he weren’t  _ not supposed to be here.  _ “I can’t believe you’re using such CRASS language in front of a minor like that! It’s unbecoming of you as the Savior Of The Goddamn World or something! Jeez, you should really watch that mouth of yours. What would Tifa say?”

Denzel made an aborted motion as if to kick the Turk in the crotch, but restrained himself (much to his disappointment). After a strange twitching fit and internal debate of  _ to kick or not to kick, _ he realized he should try to to hide the bucket he was carrying. He ended up just kicking it behind him with a ridiculously loud clatter, and wincing at the clang. “It was his idea.”

“What? No! I even helped you get in, why’re you throwing me under the bus, yo?”

Cloud shook his head. “How the hell did you get in? I live on the seventh floor.”

“No one has the keys to your apartment except you, yo. So, uh...we-”

“We climbed up-”

“THE STAIRS!” Reno cut in. “We climbed up the stairs. No piggybacking and free climbing without safety material on buildings was involved whatsoever.”

Denzel glared at him. “No, yo-”

“Oh, would you look at the time!” Reno fake-gasped. “I gotta scram. Turk things, absolutely.”

“But-”

“GOODBYE.”

The door slammed shut, not a whiff of red hair left behind. Denzel sighed. “Sorry. We haven’t hung out in a while, with you going to those meetings all the time, and I just wanted to pull something on you like I did before.”

Cloud smiled, a little warmth settling into his features. “It’s fine. I don’t mind, since it really isn’t that big of a deal. I don’t like the meetings either, but they’ve been trying to introduce a better source of power than gas. Sunlight and wind. Pretty cool.”

_What's not cool,_ he grumbled to himself,  _was the fact that Reno cooperated with the prank. As if he weren't responsible for the Sector Seven plate collapse that killed Denzel's parents._

He sighed.  _Reeve pardoned him, remember?  It's the in the past now, or whatever._

Denzel's voice broke him out of his reverie. “Edge is cloudy most of the time.”

“Well, that’s what the wind option is for.” 

“Really? How does it work?”

As Cloud got to explaining the logistics behind building massive turbines that generated electricity as the wind spun them, his mind drifted off the subject of Turks snooping around his apartment and onto why he hadn’t cherished the opportunity to be there for all his friends and adopted family before now.

_ I was really mopey, wasn’t I?  _

_ You had reason for it,  _ another voice whispered.  _ You think you can still keep this peace, after you failed the first time, and the next? You think you deserve all this? Who says it’ll last? Have you really ever found a home-somewhere you  _ belong _? _

He clenched his fists.  _ Yes. _

_ Then what are you looking for? _

He couldn’t answer.

“C’mon, Denzel,” he said instead. “Let’s get breakfast.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I DONT KNOW HOW TO WRITE BUT THANK YOU FOR KUDOS AND HITS!!! love yall, cause this was just a pet project when i wanted to write one day. means a lot to me!


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